Cloudflare has dropped the Daily Stormer
twitter.com
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> The tipping point for us making this decision was that the team behind Daily Stormer made the claim that we were secretly supporters of their ideology.
-- https://blog.cloudflare.com/why-we-terminated-daily-stormer/
A Cloudflare executed says they ditched us because "email on this is massive." So much for an anti-DDoS company. The only traffic you have to send them just has to be in the form of valid SMTP, and they'll kill your site.
Not that I want them messing with any content, but it's quite self-evident that nazi ideology isn't somehow so insanely viral that it needs to be kept away from people rather than rightly ridiculed on its "merits". If you're fine with a hands off approach when it comes to people actively conspiring to DDoS people, you should be fine with nazis saluting each other and sucking Hitler's ghastly member or whatever it is they get up to.
We're talking about nazism here. Nazism is a crime in a number of countries.
Europeans hate nazis since we are reminded everywhere about what they did last time.
This is coming from someone that thinks other would classify him as clearly right-leaning i.e. values individual freedom, conservative economic policies etc. Actually it gets better because I see nazism (short for national socialism) as just an criminally evil form of normal socialism (strong national state, very little individial freedom).
Either way, like I said - I was actually fine with them being a dumb pipe. I don't think they should be acting as an arm of the law in the first place, I was just making the point that most companies usually don't make a principled stand on free speech with respect to actual crimes with identifiable victims (e.g. DDoS or even copyright infringement), but then censor someone based on their political ideology / incorrect beliefs.
(But as I already mentioned I'm well aware that any possibility to censor speech seems likely to be abused.)
The political spectrum isn't a line, it's a circle. Go far enough either direction and you wrap around somewhat to the other side, but generally by taking ideals past the point of common sense, much less usefulness.
Technically the Cloudflare TOS is written in the normal weasely way: https://www.cloudflare.com/terms/ TERMINATION "(j) any use of the Service deemed at Cloudflare’s sole discretion to be prohibited" -- so it's within their TOS rights.
Do you have a source?
Andrew Auernheimer · @weev
A Cloudflare executed says they ditched us because "email on this is massive." So much for an anti-DDoS company. The only traffic you have to send them just has to be in the form of valid SMTP, and they'll kill your site.
I understand Cloudflare generaly trying to be a neutral provider, but if the first thing people will see when gawking at a Neo-Nazi hate site is your logo in the center of the screen, it's not a big surprise that Cloudflare decided keeping them would be bad for their PR.
https://qz.com/1053689/cloudflare-is-the-one-tech-company-st...
So far, Cloudflare has not made a statement or confirmed in any way that it has dropped Daily Stormer or any other website based on its content. If it does, I expect the confirmation will first come from Cloudflare's official blog:
The action would represent a major philosophical shift in the company's approach to these kinds of issues, and all we have to go on so far is a screenshot of a non-descriptive email, posted on a Gab.ai account that _appears_ to be run by the editor of a neo-Nazi website.
I'm not suggesting that Cloudflare has or hasn't done anything, just that we don't have a ton of information on this yet.
However, I am bit worried that this seems to happen in response to social media shit storms and not because the people in charge of these companies actually just acquired a moral backbone.
Most of the people I subscribe to on Twitter are (American-) left leaning, and in the past when I saw similar shit storms happening (e.g. GamerGate, Milo Y. etc.) I always thought "Good! What these people are doing is awful, so they had it coming." But the recent James Damore thing got me a bit worried. I wasn't fully on board on what was the dominant narrative on Twitter and the like, and was a bit horrified with what conviction I saw people who were espousing a different viewpoint were treated.
I guess I worry that corporations and people now bow so easily over social media pressure that in the future they could be easily pressured to do something that morally repugnant or some such.
Or maybe that's just how society has always been, and social media just exacerbates it.
Internet corporations bowing to social pressure to silence certain viewpoints is abhorrent. It's starting with Nazis, but chances are good that it won't end there[2].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism
[2] https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007392
Also -- Nazi's aren't far from a terrorist organization should these companies also allow ISIS and Taliban sites to recruit new members on their servers? Because - - censorship!
By that definition, we should silence any discussion of Democrats, or Republicans, or blacks, or latinos, or whatever "broad group" you'd like to suppress discussion of at the moment.
An actual good argument is that we should suppress views that may lead to terrorism. I'm pretty sure it would be easy to argue that Nazi viewpoints can be pretty terroristic. But then where do we draw the line? How do we as a society decide what is allowed and what isn't without opening up the system to exploitation by an authoritarian regime?
Given the 9th Circuit's shenanigans I'm not sure the answer is a definite "no".
http://www.focusonthedata.com/2017/05/federal-appeals-court-...
The case you're citing was a very different situation. Postings on the LiveJournal community in question, including the ones containing the infringing content, were being actively approved by LiveJournal employees and volunteers. This situation wouldn't have applied to most LiveJournal communities -- ONTD is a special case, as it's sponsored directly by LJ -- and certainly cannot apply to a web host or ISP.
To any lawyers and/or law-aware people who know the answer as it relates to Cloudflare, I'd also be interested to learn about how/if it applies to registrars.
https://www.propublica.org/article/how-cloudflare-helps-serv...
Excerpt (from May): Cloudflare, a prominent San Francisco outfit, provides services to neo-Nazi sites like The Daily Stormer, including giving them personal information on people who complain about their content.
EDIT: Also: In a post, the site’s [Daily Stormer's] architect, Andrew Auernheimer, said he had personal relationships with people at Cloudflare, and they had assured him the company would work to protect the site in a variety of ways — including by not turning over data to European courts. Cloudflare has data centers in European countries such as Germany, which have strict hate speech and privacy laws.
Company officials offered differing responses when asked about Auernheimer’s post. Kramer, Cloudflare’s general counsel, said he had no knowledge of employee conversations with Auernheimer. Later, in an email, the company said Auernheimer was a well-known hacker, and that as a result at least one senior company official “has chatted with him on occasion and has spoken to him about Cloudflare’s position on not censoring the internet.
Dumb, sure, but active support? No.
Does my free speech only end when my actions infringe other laws? Or should my free speech overrule the consequences other laws? People want to claim free speech is a moral perogative, not just some words written into a Constitution, but you can't mix unlimited free speech with the real world, at some point, idealism has to give.
And I won't say GoDaddy, Google or Cloudflare necessarily should be the ones to draw that line, but someone has to. Something had to give after Charlottesville, and we're see that here.
They have been the fundraising site of choice for white nationalists & Nazis involved in violence. The latest fundraiser is from the Nazis involved in the murder of Heather Heyer[1]. One of those attending has cheered stabbings before[2], calling it a war they were engaged in. His name is Matthew Heimbach, he is a Nazi, and he has already been in legal trouble for assaulting someone at a Trump rally[3].
Rootbocks recently lost their original host[4] after people realized kicking Nazi's asses was as easy as contacting unknowing companies to detail who their customers were[5].
After searching around for new hosts they appeared to of moved to a different domain, now using Rootbocks.co instead of .com until they are able to migrate the .com domain.
These types are to be treated like sites pushing malware, their hosts are to be contacted and pressured before their IP space can be tainted by clusters of Nazis & others promoting terrorism and violent attacks. If clickfraud is serious enough to pressure hosts into removing users then Nazis urging the purging of 'Jews and genetic filth' via violent means surely counts.
[1] https://rootbocks.com/projects/unite-right-legal-defense-fun...
[3] http://www.cbsnews.com/news/white-nationalist-leader-pleads-...
[4] https://twitter.com/RootbocksDotCom/status/89721410991314124...
And dont forget antifa painted graffiti in Berkeley saying "Liberaly get the bullet too"
Oh and New Jersey DHS recently declared them domestic terrorist group.
YouTube, Reddit, Facebook, etc. ban people without losing their safe harbor provisions. Not sure why you'd think it's any different in CloudFlare's situation.
When did this become a moral gray area?
This isn't a tough definition. I'm fine with republicans hating "lefties", broncos hating raiders, xbox hating playstation. When hate is directed at non-chosen traits, that's the red line.
Am I crazy? I feel like I am with all this defense of literal nazis (flags, signs, salute, speech and all).
This isn't a disagreement about taxes or social programs, it's an ideology that led to the Holocaust.
Last weekend's terrorist attack on the anti-racist protest, leading to the murder of one anti-racist, tells us exactly where this is going again.
That's what makes all the "well free speech" stuff seem so hollow and stupid to me--we know what's at the other end of the Nazi road, and it's nowhere we want to go.
You could also argue this from the "shouting fire in a crowed room" argument - free speech doesn't protect that.
Actually spreading nazi ideologogy is even more dangerous.
I have no obligation to be part of the platform for a position I don't support. It's not censorship when I don't give my support. It is when I try to exert control over others. It is when the government exerts that control over us all.
Exactly. Their rights. No rights were affected here. They were given permission to use cloudfare, and that was revoked. The fact they can still go somewhere else proves that no rights were affected.
I really dislike these events.
note: not particularly keen to research what it is, just going off what I can gather from the twitter comments.
For me though it is even simpler: advocating nazism means you are planning to kill.
It is not "MSM" stating anything like this but the Nazis.
This is Matthew Heimbach, the Nazi who attacked someone during a Trump rally[1], cheering on the stabbings of others calling it a war: http://archive.is/ZBOOa
They believe they are at war -right now-. This is not "MSM" but the Nazis themselves stating this after engaging in stabbings. Matthew Heimbach was also at Charlottesville[2] as documented by Vice.
Nazis who overtly state they are at war with others engaged in yet another violent attack, this one large scale enough to capture "MSM" attention.
>I think the tactics of war i.e. censorship are not the answer.
Again, this is not "MSM" causing this or furthering it, it is the Nazis. Their tactics of include censorship, and things like stabbings/ramming attacks.
[1] http://www.cbsnews.com/news/white-nationalist-leader-pleads-...
In my case I did research the claim on my own and verified with other sources prior to submitting, as I certainly don't want to participate in spreading false information :)
If Cloudflare were actually interested in avoiding alt-right dumpster fires, then I think they would also stop protecting sites like 4chan and 8ch.
>how much of /pol/ is actually alt-right and how much is using it as an affect for the lulz
A lot of people on 4chan are getting tired of /pol/'s shenanigans, constantly putting 4chan in the spotlight and dealing with a constant stream of new users that don't assimilate, destroying the culture of smaller boards.
And I mean that in the literal sense of I'm really not sure. This type of humor, if not new, seems to have at least been extremely fringe in the past.
Twitter sat ladies that cry bullied this big IT companies to deny service for Daily Stormer caused webpage to not be accessible. People who enjoyed this style of humor cant enjoy it anymore. This is very definition of censorship.
Cat ladies not visiting web page would be enough to not hurt their feelings. Them going out of their way to prevent others to enjoy this is very authoritarian and one of reasons why tragedies happen.
It's no different than a club cancelling a comedy booking because they don't want that type of comedy at their club, because they don't think their patrons will support it.
> People who enjoyed this style of humor cant enjoy it anymore. This is very definition of censorship.
No, it's not. They can go somewhere else. They can find a different provider, or publish a pamphlet or go to a street corner. You know what it means as a comedian when you can't book a club? Not enough people are interested in what you have to say to make it worthwhile to give you a pulpit, or at least not enough people to offset the distaste you cause in others. That's not censorship, that's social pressure.
Censorship is about ability and rights. Nobody is restricting the ability or rights of the daily stormer. It's still legal to post what they want, and they have avenues to do so (with enough money, they could become their own host). Freedom of speech is just as much about letting the daily stormer say what they want as it is letting cloudfare and others decide they don't want to support it.
Apparently so!
At least one downvote was explicitly because of that, and nothing to do with your position.